Save The Bees, Don’t Kill Them

We, as human beings need food to live, and I personally love food. And the truth is that we all need food to live, and for powering our bodies to get us through the day. Eating food is definitely a comforting thing, but whom do we really have to thank for its production? Famers? Yes, but we always tend to forget the real key players in production of our daily produce, the bees. They help pollinate crops so that we as human beings can have fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Bees are kind of a big deal when it comes to their jobs, because they help pollinate and grow seventy-out of a hundred human food crops. This alone supplies about 90 percent of the world’s nutritional foods that are in high demand by the human population.

So what is the leading cause of bee death? It’s very simple actually. What farmers might or might not know is that the pesticides they use to help “protect” their crops is what is actually killing off our good friends, the bees. Author, writer, and director Jon Cooksey of “How to Boil a Frog” stated, “In the last four years, the chemical industry has spent $11.2 million on a PR initiative to say it’s not their fault, so we know whose fault it is.” Droughts, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution, and even global warming have a lot to do with the shortage in lifespan of bees. So how is this all happening? Well for one thing, bees have no control of what’s going on with the world around them, and it goes back to us as humans.

Humans are responsible for the most obvious killers of bees, which are pesticides and habitat loss. If famers didn’t fall for what leading chemical companies like Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, Dow, DuPont, and Monsanto are selling to them, they could very well solve one of the two major problems. The next thing would be to solve the crisis of habitat loss. So what are some solutions we can strive for to save our friends the bees? Well, for starters, we could ban the seven most dangerous pesticides; which include, nicotine-based clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam, the nicotinoid pesticides—clorpyriphos, cypermethrin, deltamethrin, and fipronil. These are all used in soils, on foliage, and found in seeds. At times they are mixed to create deadly hive cocktails that help aid in destroying beehives and colonies.

Protecting and preserving wild habitat could very much aid in our helpful pollinator’s lifespan and bringing back the ways of ecological agriculture. Ecological farming will help sustain human food production, preserve wildlife habitats, and most importantly, protect the bees. Organic farming is the most efficient means of producing an outcome that could help us all to live in a healthy world. For more information on different ways one can become involved with the movement to help save the bees, sites like greenpeace.org or even sos-bees.org do a very good job with to aid this great and notable cause. So think twice next time you want to stomp out or kill a poor bee. Majority of the time they’re just doing their jobs and minding their own business.